


Five Near Misses and One Indirect Approach

by reyva_foreyva



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Canonical Character Death mentioned, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 05:36:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6740656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reyva_foreyva/pseuds/reyva_foreyva
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Or, how Rey and Jess finally got it together.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> This started out trying to be a lighthearted approach to the prompt "they're both terrible at flirting" but it ended up getting a bit serious in places, especially at the beginning, which picks up at the end of TFA and as a result has a brief focus on canon character death (sorry).

It wasn't a party, not really. There was too much to mourn, and too much to do.

Starkiller Base had been destroyed, but so too had the New Republic's capital and the bulk of its fleet. And the First Order knew their location: they had evaded destruction by the appalling new superweapon by the skin of their teeth, and the brave actions of a few -- Rey did not count herself among these, however much everyone around her tried to insist that she was a hero -- but the conventional forces that were certainly on their way could still take their revenge by pummelling the crust of D'Qar until it liquefied.

Everywhere, people were exchanging stories and news. Rey could also hear tall tales being spun that she knew would one day become legends, of how she had fought in single lightsaber combat against none other than Kylo Ren himself. No one wanted to hear her version: that she had been terrified; that luck had been just as important as skill, if not more so; that she would not have had the chance without Finn's bravery.

In other conversations, those whose loved ones had been in the Hosnian System desperately exchanged whatever fragments of news they had, hoping against hope that there might be some survivors of the catastrophe.

And for others, the grief was far more personal. Leia had taken Rey aside to ask about what had happened in Precinct 47. They had never met before, but now were inextricably bound together by the horror of it all. When Rey had answered all of Leia's questions, the General went into her office for a few minutes. Rey had heard a few racking sobs, and felt a pang in her heart for what had happened to Leia's family; she knew that she was grieving for a son as much as a husband. But then Leia had emerged, dry-eyed and ready to get everything in motion.

Now, there was bustle everywhere. In the command centre, droids, troopers and generals alike did whatever was necessary to progress the evacuation plans. Rey had asked if there was anything she could do to help, had carried a few things here and there, but those who didn't know who she was didn't know what she could do, and those who did seemed to hold her in awe. It made her feel uncomfortable, but word was spreading of the star map, and the special mission that would the Millennium Falcon would launch on tomorrow, even before the evacuation proper got underway. Leia had told her that she would need to rest but Rey was not ready for sleep yet.

She had spent some time in the infirmary, staring at Finn's unconscious form. A fussy medical droid with an overly literal interpretation of its last orders from the doctor had kept her from getting too close to him, but had answered all her questions well enough.

Eventually, with nowhere else to go, she had found her way to the recreation hall, which had mostly been taken over by Red and Blue Squadrons. They had the most to mourn apart from Leia -- many brave pilots had lost their lives in the assault on Starkiller Base -- but the most to celebrate too. There was music, and occasionally dancing, but also a lot of people sitting in small groups, nursing their drinks as they shared their stories of their fallen comrades.

Rey somehow found herself talking to Poe, the one who had flown into the oscillator itself to complete the job Han had begun. He had sought her out in fact, to thank her for looking after his droid. To Rey's mind, if anyone deserved the title of hero of the hour, it was Poe. He seemed as uncomfortable with the praise as she was, but dealt with it differently, deflecting the attention of anyone who tried to credit him with the victory onto their own role. For a moment, Rey felt like an impostor, unworthy to be among these people who were mourning for people she had never known, who had been making sacrifices she could never have imagined while life passed her by on Jakku.

"So you're the one who's going to go and find Luke Skywalker," Poe said in a momentary lull. It was almost as though he could read her mind, wanted to remind her that she definitely had a role to play now.

As he said the name, Rey was aware of heads turning in their direction. Most turned back just as quickly to their own conversations as they realised there was nothing really new being said. But one stayed longer, holding Rey's gaze. Rey looked back, momentarily transfixed. The fighter pilot -- young, Rey reckoned, maybe slightly older than she was herself -- was strikingly beautiful. Rey felt something that she could not really name, did not recognise as the sort of feeling that might belong to her at all; she knew that she was gripped with the desire to know more about whoever this person was, but there was more to it than that, that even she didn't really understand.

"I'm going to try," Rey said eventually when she realised that Poe was waiting for her to say something.

"That's all any of us can ask," Poe said.

Rey looked up again to see if she could spot the face of the other pilot. She had turned back away, but was she still looking at them from the side of her eye, even as she continued talking to her friend?

"Who's that?" she asked Poe, nodding with her head.

"Who, Snap?"

She had already met Snap when she first came in. "With him," Rey said.

"Oh, that's Testor," Poe said. "Why?" he asked after a moment, giving her an appraising look.

"Nothing," Rey said. "She just seemed ... interested. When you mentioned Luke."

"You mean when I blabbed at the top of my voice about the secret mission to the room full of other people who know about the secret mission?" Poe said, laughing. Rey frowned at him. "I promise you, Testor's not a spy for the First Order. And nor is anyone else here. So why are you asking?"

"Like I said, she seemed interested."

"Interested, or interesting?" Poe said, still with a smirk in his voice.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, I think you should go talk to her."

Rey thought about this idea for a moment. To her surprise, it filled her with a sort of fear: nothing like the terror she'd felt just a few hours before, facing off against Kylo Ren. It was more a sort of excited trepidation, like her stomach was knotting and unknotting itself in strange ways. She wasn't used to this: she might not be as outgoing as someone like Poe, but she was usually happy to talk to anyone, whether she thought they wanted to hear or not.

It was all very strange and perplexing. But she wasn't going to get to the bottom of the confusion she was feeling sat here, she decided. She said goodbye to Poe and headed over to the bar, but by the time she reached it "Testor" was nowhere to be seen.


	2. Chapter 2

Rey took her tray and looked around at the crowded refectory, searching for somewhere to sit.

Luke had told her that it was important they join in with the full life of the base, shortly before he had disappeared to talk to Leia for what must have been several hours now. After going to find out how Finn was -- and being told that he had was fully recovered, indeed so well that he was leading an undercover mission in disputed territory -- Rey had found herself at a loose end, just as she had on D'Qar all those many months ago.

The new Resistance Base was very unlike the one she had left. Built into a hollowed out asteroid in a brown dwarf system, far -- they hoped -- from anywhere the First Order would think to search, space and amenities were at a premium. Docking bays doubled as cargo handling areas, corridors as storage rooms; even the refectory pulled double duty. At the end of this meal, she had been told, all the furniture would be cleared away to allow for an hour of vigorous physical exercise for everyone not on duty, to ensure that the cramped conditions did not cause any deterioration in health.

Rey eventually spotted an empty spot, halfway down a long table. She stepped into it and only when she did so realise who she was opposite. "Testor", who she had nearly met back then on D'Qar. Who had somehow always ended up featuring in her imagination during her training with Luke on Ahch-To, whenever Luke's perorations about the foolishness of the old Jedi Order in rejecting love had struck a particular chord. Not that Rey loved this woman, she told herself sternly. She didn't even know her. But when she imagined the possibilities of the word, this seemed to be where her mind always ended up.

And yet, she knew for certain that if she had realised who she would be sitting opposite, she would have walked round in circles for as long as it took for a seat to become free at some other table.

Testor looked across at her appraisingly, but didn't say anything.

Rey closed her eyes and dug deep within herself for the courage to overcome whatever foolishness had possessed her. "Hi, I'm Rey."

"I know who you are," Testor said. Everyone knows who you are, she didn't have to add.

"And I know who you are," Rey said. "Testor, right?"

This earned a laugh. "No one's called me that in ages!" Another appraising look. "How did you know that?"

"Poe told me," Rey said. "On-- You know--"

"After Starkiller Base."

"Yes," Rey said. She embraced the sudden wave of emotion that came over her, finding the peace that came with acknowledging her feelings but not being mastered by them, as Luke had taught her. "So, what should I call you?"

"Jessika. Jessika Pava. Jess, really. Or Blue Three. Or Green Leader, these days."

"I didn't know there was a Green Squadron," Rey said. The X-wings that had escorted the Millennium Falcon in, after the series of misadventures that had befallen the ship and its crew between leaving the water world of Luke's exile and finally managing to make contact with the Resistance, had been from Blue and Red Squadrons.

"There isn't," Testor -- no, Jess -- said. "It's a joke. I seem to have ended up in charge of training the new recruits."

"Are there many?" Rey said between mouthfuls. "New recruits?"

"More than we can really deal with," Jess said. "Certainly more than we have the fighters for. Still, it means we can maintain fighter ops around the clock."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"It is," Jess said. "But I don't like sharing. My X-Wing's _mine_ , you know what I mean?"

Rey thought about the Millennium Falcon, the way it had been Han's but was now (even according to Chewie, whose word she accepted as infallible in this regard) hers. "I do," Rey said.

The conversation lurched to an uneasy stop. Rey racked her brains for something to say. She was enjoying talking to Test-- Jess, she corrected herself again -- more than she wanted to admit. But what more was there to say? "I've always wanted to fly an X-Wing," Rey said.

"I told you, my X-Wing's mine," Jess said.

Rey smiled. "No, I mean, could I have a go? On a training flight?"

"Aren't you too busy with your Jedi training?"

"I'm sure I can make time somewhere in my schedule," Rey said.

Jess looked at her levelly. "You do know that you already fly one of the only freighters that could even hope to keep pace with us?"

"I know," Rey said. "She made the Kessel Run in fourteen-- no, twelve parsecs. But I've always wanted to fly an X-Wing."

This led to another pause in the conversation, as Jess continued to look at her, seemingly uncertain how to respond. Rey was used to long silences -- by herself on Jakku, on Ahch-To when Luke had been meditating -- but even a short moment made her uneasy that she might never get a chance to talk to Jess ever again. "The food's good," she tried after the agonising became unbearable.

Jess snorted with laughter. "You think so?" A few people nearby turned to look, and Rey felt a moment of embarrassment.

"It's better than what I was used to on Jakku," Rey said, which was true, though only barely. "And a diet of fish gets very repetitive."

"So it's true what they say, that Temple world, it was a waterworld?"

"It is now," Rey said.

"I was born on a waterworld," Jess said. She looked into the distance for a moment, and Rey found herself gazing at her brown eyes. She snapped out of it only when Jess said, "I've got to go. But I'll put you on the roster." Rey looked puzzled. "For a training flight. If you're good, we might even let you join up."

Rey smiled. "I'd like that."

Jess picked up her tray, but stopped for a moment. "You know, you're really not what I would have expected," Jess said. "For a Jedi, I mean."


	3. Chapter 3

Jess patted Rey's flight suit, checking the seals and connections. Rey tried her best not to read anything into such an everyday occurrence, but some giddy inner part of thrilled to the touch of the other woman, even through multiple layers of heavy fabric.

"All OK," Jess said.

It was the first time they had seen each other since their encounter in the refectory, and several days had passed, during which Rey imagined that Jess had been just as busy as she had. But true to her word, she had put her on the training roster -- at the end; no special favours, even for a Jedi -- and now Rey's turn had come. Luke had counselled against the distraction from their studies, but she had reminded him of what he had said about getting fully involved -- that the Jedi could not afford to cut themselves off, especially when they were the only two in the galaxy. He had relented, and almost immediately begun bombarding her with advice she didn't really need. But it was interesting to see this other side of him: talking about flying seemed to open up a younger Luke, one who had not yet been burdened with the weight of the galaxy on his shoulders.

"So I can get in now?"

"You can get it now," Jess said. "I'll be flying right alongside you, so don't worry. But be careful -- she'll be more responsive than you're used to."

A member of the support crew stood ready to whisk the ladder away as soon as Rey was on board; Jess didn't seem to need one, clambering up the side of her cockpit with surprising grace as her R3 unit was lowered in. Rey reached for the helmet in front of her and put it on. She remembered the helmet she had owned back on Jakku, one of her few luxuries. She could have sold it to Unkar Plutt for at least a week's rations, but it was far more valuable to her than that for what it represented: the dream of flight, the idea that there had once been someone who fought for the side of the light whose life had intersected, however briefly, with the empty wilderness of Jakku.

Suddenly, there was a loud buzzing as the communicator clicked on. "Are you reading me?" Jess's voice echoed around in the confines of the helmet. Rey had been expecting it, but she was surprised by exactly how loud it was: her old helmet's communicator had long since given up functioning, and even when it had no one had ever been transmitting on the right frequency.

"Loud and clear," Rey said.

"OK," Jess said. "Remember, minimum power until we clear the hangar. If you're worried, just let BB-8 handle it."

Having BB-8 for her astromech droid was a perk, but not one bestowed by Jess. No other trainee got to be accompanied Black Leader's droid, let alone on their maiden flight. But when BB-8 had got wind of her intention to fly, he had insisted on coming with her, and Poe had been happy to oblige. "I think I'll be all right," she said. BB-8 chirped approvingly.

Another voice cut in across the channel, the duty technician in flight control. "X-Wing training flight six-niner-three, you are cleared to launch in your own time."

Rey nudged the throttle minutely and the X-Wing lurched forward.

"I told you," Jess said. "Responsive."

"I can handle responsive," Rey blurted out, as she steadied the craft to head through the field separating the docking bay from the vacuum outside.

As soon as they were out in space, the X-Wing came alive. Rey banked left, then right. The X-Wing felt like an extension of her own body, flying it more meditation than conscious effort. She performed an impromptu barrel roll, almost without meaning to.

"Steady," Jess warned as she followed Rey out. "You can show off all your fanciest tricks at the training ground. The waypoint's already programmed into your navicomputer."

BB-8 whistled and beeped.

"BB-8 says he knows the way," Rey said.

"I'm sure he does."

They flew out across the swirling disc of debris around the brown dwarf, failed planets lit by a failed sun, giving out a dim red glow as it slowly contracted. The Resistance base was built into the largest of the asteroids, but there were many others. The training ground was one of the denser concentrations, a few million kilometres closer in. BB-8 gave her a path that dipped below the ecliptic before emerging in the middle of it.

"So what sort of things do you do here?" Rey asked. "With your trainee pilots?"

"They learn basic flight control and navigation well away from the disc," Jess said. "But I think you can skip that. _This_ is where we do target practice."

"Blowing up asteroids?"

BB-8 hooted, and Jess laughed; the helmet added a harsh buzz of static which should have made it sound unattractive, but Rey was unable to feel that way about it.

"What?" Rey asked. "What am I missing?"

"Target the asteroids," Jess said.

"I thought we weren't blowing up asteroids," Rey said.

"If you're going to play at being a trainee, you need to follow my orders," Jess said with mock sternness.

"OK, OK," Rey said. "I'll follow orders." She targeted the nearest asteroid and the display in front of her lit up with the sensor's analysis: density, composition, minimum yield of proton torpedo required for complete destruction ... "It's an asteroid," she said eventually.

"Try another one."

Jess made her go through six more asteroids before Rey found the one. Although it looked superficially like the rest, its density was much lower, and there were traces of concentrated metal beneath the crust. A deeper sensor scan showed a hollowed out structure, hints of machinery. "What is this? An abandoned base?"

"Not quite," Jess said. "How much do you know about history?"

"I didn't exactly have lessons growing up."

"But you've trained under Master Luke since then," Jess said. He hated "Master", but Rey didn't correct her.

"Which bit of history are we talking about?"

"The Clone Wars," Jess said. "Or around then, anyhow."

Luke had explained at length what he had been able to piece together of the story of his father -- partly as a warning, partly as an explanation for so much of what had happened after -- and the Clone Wars had featured heavily. But Rey couldn't see the relevance to a hollowed-out asteroid. "I've heard a bit about it," she said.

"What you're looking at is a salvaged Trade Federation Drone Deployment Depot. Self-repairing and self-sufficient, provided it has enough raw materials. At peak operating capacity, and with no raw materials bottlenecks, one of those can construct one hundred new automated fighter drones an hour."

Rey gasped. "But--"

"Don't worry, we've got the programming on a very tight leash." BB-8 hooted with pride; clearly he had been involved. "And we've limited the availability of certain rare elements, just to be sure. We just use it to provide us with target practice."

Before Jess had even finished speaking, a swarm of small fighters had emerged from inside the asteroid and were converging on their location. Suddenly, they were firing, and Rey instinctively took evasive action.

"They're firing tracer beams and percussion missiles only," Jess said as Rey accelerated hard. "But you can blow them up for real, the depot's harvester drones will come out when we're done and salvage everything anyway."

Rey spun the X-Wing round several times as she continued to accelerate up out of the ecliptic, refusing to allow the drone fighters to lock on.

"Very fancy flying," Jess said. "But come on, fight back!"

Rey grinned as she suddenly flipped the X-Wing round and dived back into the swarm, firing as she did so, brief controlled bursts which always found a target. More and more drones emerged from the factory facility; the sensor scans were only briefly visible before Rey destroyed them, but she got the impression they were being equipped with faster engines and extra missile tubes as they emerged.

"The adaptive programming is intentional, right?" she said. "It hasn't gone rogue?"

"It responds to perceived threat, up to a hard limit that we've coded in," Jess said. "But you've nearly reached it already."

"Well, then, aren't you going to join in?" Rey said as she flew past Jess's stationary X-Wing at speed. She was rewarded by seeing the glow of Jess's engines behind her reflected in her cockpit.

"Check your six, Rey!" Jess said as she joined the fray. Rey saw it: a sleek interceptor design that was optimised for speed and agility over weapon loadout.

"I see it," Rey said. She swept through a pattern of evasive manoeuvres, but the pursuer stuck with her doggedly. "I can't shake it." She felt a jolt as the X-Wing's systems simulated the effect of the shot it had successfully made at her if it had been real.

"Cut your engines," Jess said.

Rey was about to protest when she realised what Jess was suggesting. She put the X-Wing into a sudden dive, and then cut off all power, continuing forward but no longer accelerating. The drone flew past her, unable to respond quickly enough. As it turned in a wide arc to come back to her, she lined it up in her targeting reticule and fired, once, twice, and it disintegrated into atoms.

"Very impressive," Jess said as she mopped up the remaining fighters. The drone depot seemed to have stopped producing them; Rey couldn't be sure whether it had reached some endgame state, or run out of materials.

"I'm glad you think so," Rey said.

BB-8 beeped that he would definitely be telling Poe about her exploits.

"I was pretty much joking before," Jess said, "but any time you're not too busy with your Jedi training, you can definitely join us out on patrol."


	4. Chapter 4

Rey stood with her lightsaber in front of her, holding it steady. The beam flickered, wavered, then glowed steady again, silver-white in the darkness.

Luke was pacing around behind her; she ignored the distraction of his movements, listening only to his voice. "Focus," he said. She closed her eyes, thinking back to when she had built this lightsaber, deep in a cavern on Ahch-To, thinking back to when she had first applied what Maz had told her about listening to the Force. The lightsaber was a tool more than a weapon, she told herself, its blade was an extension of her will. But it flickered again as her mind drifted to the way the X-Wing yesterday had felt like an extension of her body, the way it had felt to fly in unison with Jess.

Jess. Jess was standing in the doorway. Watching her. How long had she been there?

The lightsaber beam flared out of control and Rey quickly thumbed it off before anything catastrophic happened.

"I will leave you," Luke said. "Perhaps we have done too much for one day." Rey turned round to protest but Luke merely smiled.

Jess said nothing as Luke walked past her, merely gazing at him with something close to religious awe. Rey was well aware of the different ways the others regarded them both, but there were subtle differences. She knew, though no one said it to her face, that some still harboured resentment towards Luke, for what they perceived as his abandonment of a desperate fight. She worried sometimes that Jess was one of those. She wanted to explain, but it was not her place to do so; let Luke speak for himself, if and when he wanted to, about his own struggles, about the worst that could have happened if he had thrown himself into conflict in the wake of the betrayal. But the way Jess had looked at Luke just now said something very different.

"I'm sorry," Jess said. "I shouldn't have interrupted."

"It is quite all right," Rey said, composed, breathing deeply as her heart pounded in her chest. This was the first time that Jess had sought her out. "What can I do for you?"

"Nothing, really," Jess said. "I just finally got an hour of downtime and I ... OK, I wanted an excuse to see Luke Skywalker himself," she finished. "Up close. I grew up on all the stories, and I've seen him around the base since you all came back on the Falcon ..."

"On Jakku, everyone thought he was a myth," Rey said. "But now I know the man. Or at least some parts of him."

"So what's he like?"

"He saved the galaxy," Rey said, "when he was-- well, our age, basically. I can't work out what that means and I've spent months with him now. He says he didn't, that it was Anakin's sacrifice that was the most important ..." Jess swallowed back something she clearly wanted to say, and Rey wondered if she'd heard a rather different version of Anakin's role in the story. "He was an X-Wing pilot," Rey said, trying a different tack. "Did you know that?"

Jess laughed. "Why do you think I became one? It's not like I could become a Jedi just by trying. But piloting -- that's a reasonable goal for an ordinary gal like me."

"You're not ordinary," Rey said. Worried that she had said too much, she gabbled on, "No one is. Everyone is-- Oh, it's hard to explain, it's like ... everyone glows with the Force. Luminous beings, that's what Luke says."

"What's _it_ like? The Force?"

Rey thought for a moment. "I don't know," she said. "Everything is different, and everything is the same. I think the Force has always been there with me, even when I didn't know that was what it was. When I think back over everything that's happened to me, there's a lot that could have been worse, a lot I did that most other people couldn't have done the same way. So ... I don't know."

"What about the Dark Side?"

"What about it?"

"Do you feel it? Does it ... I don't know, tempt you?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I always heard that the Jedi had to be beyond emotion," Jess said. "That strong feelings led to the Dark Side. Even the ones most people think of as good. But you don't exactly seem emotionless."

"I'll try to take that as a compliment," Rey said with a smile.

"You're not on the path to the Dark Side then?"

"I have to hope that I'm not," Rey said. "Are you worried that I enjoyed the fighter training too much?"

"It's not just that," Jess said.

Rey thought for a moment about how to respond. "The Jedi fell," she said eventually. "And when Luke tried to rebuild them ... well, everyone knows now what happened. Luke has spent years trying to work out what went wrong, trying to understand the Force, what it wants. He thinks cutting themselves off from emotions may have been one of the biggest mistakes the Jedi ever made. But we have to hope that we can make a better future."

"But you wear Jedi robes. You have the ..." Jess waved her hand at the side of her head, indicating where Rey had her braid.

"We honour the past," Rey said carefully. "We do not feel bound to repeat it in all respects."

"So, you are allowed to love?"

Why was Jess asking this? Rey allowed herself to dare to hope for an instant that there was some specific reason behind the question. "Yes," she said carefully, even as her heart felt lighter in her chest and her stomach twisted. "We embrace our emotions, but we do not allow them to control us." Though she was doing a very bad job of it at this precise moment, Rey told herself. She wondered if Jess could tell.

"I see," Jess said. She seemed melancholy. "Well, I'll see you around. Thanks for the chat."

Rey had said the wrong thing. But was it her repudiation of the old Jedi code? Had she failed to assuage Jess's fears of what she might become? Or was it what she had said about not being controlled by her emotions?

Rey stood in the darkness of the training room and waited until her will, not her emotions, was in control before turning her lightsaber back on.

She was waiting for some time.


	5. Chapter 5

Rey had finally found something useful she could do for the base. The quartermaster's office had use for her scavenging skills in maintaining and repairing their battered stock of equipment from many disparate corporations and planetary militias. She spent a couple of hours each day helping out with whatever needed doing; she had found a pair of tech specialist goggles languishing in the back of the stores that no one else seemed to want, probably because of how bulky they were. But they reminded Rey of the ones she had found for herself on Jakku to protect her from the worst of the sand, only a thousand times more useful. They had multiple heads up displays and entoptic feedback loops, allowing her to pick up any piece of equipment and immediately access whatever information it carried with itself about its function, manufacture, or anything else anyone had seen fit to program onto it.

She almost didn't recognise Jess when she came in, so many of the parts on her flight suit were flashing up data about themselves.

"Hi," Rey said brightly when she finally realised who was there. It had been a few days since their last encounter, and Rey still wasn't sure whether or not she'd done something to upset Jess.

"Hi," Jess said guardedly.

"Didn't recognise me with these on?" Rey guessed, then instantly chided herself for being stupid: she was still wearing her Jedi robes, and as Jess had pointed out the other day, her hairstyle was rather distinctive.

"Er, yeah," Jess said, and Rey appreciated her not mocking her.

"What can we do for you?"

"Oh, it's OK. You know what, I took a wrong turn. I was looking for droid maintenance."

"I know a thing or two about droid maintenance," Rey said. "As it happens."

"Of course you do," Jess said.

"Honestly, I'm not too busy," Rey said. "Most of these actuators are fine, they've just not been labelled properly."

Jess smiled at her. "R3's been getting a bit slow with his hyperspace computations," she said. "I ... It's terrible, but I can never make myself concentrate long enough to do a proper job of maintaining him. He looks after himself well enough, but ... well, to be honest, I think he could do with a memory wipe."

Rey gasped. "No, no, there are much better ways--"

Jess looked at her, and it was the same appraising look that Rey had seen on her face when they'd first talked back in the refectory. "Maybe this was the right place to come after all," Jess said. "This is going to sound silly, but I don't want him to forget me."

"That's not silly at all. Send him to me."

"OK," Jess said, "I will."

She smiled briefly at Rey as she left, and Rey felt her heart lift, then plummet again. Perhaps, she thought ruefully, the old Jedi had been on to something after all. She was sure Luke was right that emotions didn't have to lead to the Dark Side, but they certainly led to confusion.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey smiled at R3 as he trundled in, head gyrating nervously from side to side. "I'm sure you _don't_ need a memory wipe really. Let me have a look and see what's going on."

R3 wheeled closer, giving a low whistle.

"Yes, I promise," Rey said. "No memory wipes."

Reassured, R3 popped open the maroon panel on the side of his head that allowed access to his core circuitry. Rey reached for her goggles and delved in.

Helpful -- and not-so-helpful -- annotations blossomed across her visual field, some from original manufacturers, some added by others who had maintained him over the years (there were a lot of notes to self from Jess about kludges she really ought to do something about some day), some cryptic binary added by R3 himself.

Rey quickly decided that there was nothing wrong with R3's cranial hardware -- though the fault reporting board was complaining about the diodes down his left side; she'd take a look at that later if she had time -- but that his memory was indeed leaking all over, and his long term storage fragmented in the extreme across several different subsystems. In the enhanced vision provided by the goggles, with everything colour-coded, it looked like half a dozen rainbows had collided and wound themselves around each other. In a single moment of clarity, Rey saw how to untangle them, to turn the riot of colour into a simple, elegant pattern.

She had never seen a rainbow before leaving Jakku. But on Ahch-To they had been an almost daily occurrence. She knew that her frames of reference were changing, as she experienced things that she never had before. But she knew too that she was still her, still _Rey_. It was the same with whatever was -- or wasn't -- going on with Jess. She knew that she had never felt this way about someone before, but she could identify a common thread back to the yearnings for companionship she had felt back in the endless desert. She had learned young to survive on her own, not to rely on others, certainly not to trust anyone else. But she had always believed that people were capable of better than what that harsh environment forced them to be. And just as she had seen lush greenery and water -- so much water -- out among the other worlds, so too had she had her first real experiences of others extending compassion and friendship towards her. And that had been wonderful, but it was only a foretaste of what she hoped to find one day with another. She forced herself to be honest about it: with Jess.

Rey realised the display in front of her was drifting out of focus and blinked a few times to refocus herself on R3's sprawling memory. It was obvious to her how to consolidate it, place each set of memories in the most relevant places and minimise the lengths of the chains of cross-references. Without further ado, she set to work.

R3 could clearly feel what she was doing and started to beep agitatedly and whir so that Rey had to snatch her fingers away to avoid doing any inadvertent damage. "No, no, I promised. No memory wipe. Just... tidying things up, that's all. After I've done this, you can compress the ones you use least often. You should talk to R2-D2, he knows some very efficient algorithms."

R3 hooted, slightly warily, but allowed her to continue.

About ten minutes later, the colour coded schematic presented by the goggles had become much neater, each main block of processing architecture predominantly in one shade, the links between them neat braids, like the one Rey wore in her own hair.

R3 whistled happily in thanks.

"No problem," Rey said. "It's no wonder you were having trouble, your peripheral connections would have been running at full capacity whenever you tried to do anything more complicated than move forward."

She was about to deactivate the goggles when she realised that there was still something lodged in tertiary motivator memory that clearly shouldn't be there: a splodge of dark purple against a bright yellow background. "Wait, what's that? Sorry, R3, just give me a minute more."

On further investigation, the extra memory was a holo-message. "What's that doing there?" Rey said, mostly to herself, but R3 responded excitedly. "Well, yes, we could play it and find out," Rey said. "By all means, go ahead."

Rey sat back on crossed legs as R3's holo-projector emerged from his casing. The shimmer from it quickly resolved into a close up image of a face: human, young, female. Jess.

What was this? Some sort of final message, for R3 to play if Jess was lost in action? Rey suddenly felt as though she was intruding. She was reaching to deactivate the projector when Jess's image spoke. "Hi, Rey," it said.

Rey rocked backwards again, taken by surprise.

"Listen," Jess went on. "I have no idea why I'm doing this, except... Except hope, I guess. Hope for a better future, that was what you said."

There was a long pause. "The thing is, I've been thinking about everything we've been doing recently. And ... well, I don't know, but I'm hoping that maybe you're finding excuses -- reasons! I mean reasons! -- to be with me. Because I know that I am with you. Like the other day, when I came to see you training. I mean, I have always wanted to see Luke up close, but it was you I was really interested in. I tried to say something to you then but we ended up discussing ... philosophy or whatever. But if I'm not wrong about ... this ... us ..." She stopped again. "Dammit. I thought saying all this to R3 would be easier than saying it to your face. Maybe I _am_ wrong. But look, the main thing is ... I'm interested. In you. So... look, if I've got this all horribly wrong just pretend you never found this message and send R3 back to me by himself. But if you are ... interested, maybe you should come with him."

It was only when R3 beeped gently to request further instructions that she realised how long she had been sitting there after the message had finished, in a state of delighted confusion.

R3 beeped again, more insistently. "Yes," Rey said. "Yes, we should go and see her." She began to wonder how aware R3 was of what exactly was going on here.

It was only a short way to Jess's quarters. Their route led past the refectory, and Rey stopped for a moment, looking at where they had had that first conversation, a week or so before. Such a short time, compared to her months of training on Ahch-To, her years of scavenging on Jakku, but such a long time in other ways. She had learned more about Luke's ideals of embracing emotion in that time, had more reason to apply them practically, than she ever had before.

When they reached Jess's door, R3 hung back at the point that the door would have automatically sensed him and opened, leaving Rey to knock.

When the door opened, Jess was standing on the other side. As soon as she saw Rey, her face split open in the smile that Rey had overanalysed so many times, but now had a meaning which was perfectly clear.

Rey smiled back. "I brought back your droid."


End file.
